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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22982704">Mistakes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antartique/pseuds/Antartique'>Antartique</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Animal Death, Confinement, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Headcanon galore, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Isolation, Medicinal Drug Use, Recreational Drug Use, Sreng Gautiers, Suicide Attempt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:13:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,566</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22982704</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antartique/pseuds/Antartique</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sylvain is a mistake, and mistakes have to pay for their wrongdoings.</p><p>The one where Margrave Gautier's leash on his son is a lot shorter than most people expect.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>201</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Mistakes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Warnings:</b> Read the tags? Nothing is explicit tbh, but this is a Sylvain POV fic so it might get... bad. Everything serious is referenced or implied, except for the uuh suicide attempts, which are really... hm. There's lots of imagination. Also really open end because I'm just like this I guess.</p><p>Also happy Sylvain week! It just so happened that this got posted this week okay...</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sylvain is a mistake.</p><p>He is not even exaggerating, nor talking bad about himself like he always does. Sylvain is, objectively, a mistake. To his parents, to his friends, to his land; to his brother. He has known he is a mistake for many years now, but no other time was it as strong a feeling as it is right now.</p><p>He looks down at his shattered leg, the aftermath of maybe two weeks in captivity by the Empire. People call Gautier cowards for hiding in their forts and keeps at the border, but they treat their prisoners with <em>some</em> decency: at least, if the prisoners are too injured to continue, then they are killed. And when the Imperial soldier broke his leg with a mace, he honestly expected a swift death afterwards, as he <em>clearly</em> was not going to talk. Their questions were senseless, anyways, because Dimitri is dead, and if he isn’t then he hasn’t shown his face in Gautier. Dimitri has not come so far North since he was twelve.</p><p>However, Sylvain lived. He somehow survived long enough to be rescued, by his Mother even. Everyone knows Irene Gautier does not leave her post at the border, so that she was the one to come to his aid was a not really pleasant surprise. She destroyed the camp, sword twirling in her hand like the Sword of the Creator, spells flying left and right from her hands; it was a sight to behold.</p><p>He can hear Mother outside the tent, talking to the healer. He knows what his diagnosis is: shattered leg, broken ribs, a punctured lung they got to heal just in time to keep him stable. Countless bruises and wounds, risk of infection, probably will not go back to the battlefield in some months, if not <em>years</em>. A surprise he is still alive, considering how long he was out there and the extent of the damage, if he had a weaker will he would have died days ago.</p><p>Maybe he should have. Sylvain is a mistake, yet he is also Gautier, made of ice and stone and unwavering defenses, but not even he would be able to survive the words of Father once he hears about all this. Miklan did not, after all, how is Sylvain any different?</p><p>“José?” Mother comes into the tent, hazel eyes looking down at him. Her sword isn’t with her right now, which is odd: Sylvain hasn’t seen either of his parents out of full battle gear since he was a child. Today, she wears a battle dress that is more metal than cloth, and moves eerily silent with each step she gives. Her hair is red as the skies of Sreng in the evening, held back with a heavy braid that makes her look like an ancient fairy. “We will bring you back on the wagon. It might be uncomfortable.”</p><p>“That’s alright— Can’t exactly ride like this, can I.” Sylvain motions to his leg. It doesn’t hurt as much now that he has been treated, but it is still hard to sit up. Mother helps, and after she gives him his medicine, kneels besides the cot with her hands grasping her skirts.</p><p>“You shouldn’t worry so much. You will heal, it is going to be okay.”</p><p>“Yeah? I doubt that.” Father will be angry, after all. He has no doubt he will be cursed to hell and back once they return home.</p><p>“I know Taiva can be rough, but— But he can’t blame you for a mistake.”</p><p>A mistake should not cost a life, though. A mistake should not leave so many dead. A <em>mistake</em> is not what Sylvain would call this, not now and not ever.</p><p> </p><p>Days pass. They get home. Sylvain returns to his daily life, now needing help to move around. He does not meet Father, or Mother, or even his cousin for weeks after he has settled back in his room, and that makes him feel like something is wrong.</p><p>The library where he spends most of his awake time sees many guests. A knight from the border who winks at him past her fan, a stable boy who kisses his hand and wishes him good night, a lady from a few towns south who plays a mean game of chess and offers him too many drinks. A clanshead from Sreng who entered the wrong room and ‘fell in love at the first sight’, a messenger from Fraldarius who offers him a feather of her pegasus. They come and get their fill and leave, and Sylvain cannot do much to stop them from doing so.</p><p>He might as well enjoy it. So he tells his Father when he comes by the eastern wing, where Sylvain has been confined since his rescue.</p><p>“You should,” Father says, capturing his Queen with an effortless flourish of his hand. Sylvain frowns at the board: he doesn’t like his odds. “Now that you are home, I expect to see you fulfil your duties to our name.”</p><p>‘You are not infallible,’ Sylvain hears. ‘You have given us no heirs so far, and Gautier will not see you die before you have left your mark in this world.’</p><p>He has been hearing it for so long, he does not care to protest. He does not like it, but he is not expected to have fun anyways.</p><p>It is just duty, after all.</p><p> </p><p>Sylvain is a mistake. He has known this for many years now, and now it is even more clear. His parents often said they ‘raised him wrong, made all the wrong choices’ when talking behind closed doors, and now the one who gets the blame for their wrongdoings is Sylvain.</p><p>Too big, not big enough, too soft, too much of a pacifist. Too much a lance user and not enough magic, too much magic and not enough lances. More Faerghus than Sreng, or too much of Sreng and not enough Faerghus. Too much like Mother, too much like Father, not enough of either and too much <em>Sylvain</em>.</p><p>In the end, he has never been allowed to be himself. He was raised to be a miniature of Father for many years, while Mother took care to beat the weakness out of him. Training was tough and so were his studies; he had to be ahead of everyone else at all times, including people older than him by years. He learned the cruelties of war when younger than ten, and the reality of the world around the same time. He had to <em>survive</em>, to teach himself how to face people who only wanted to eat him alive or dead in any way that mattered.</p><p>Sylvain is a collection of mistakes of other people. Taiva and Irene who had only ever been warriors and never <em>parents</em>. Miklan who had looked at the world through a lens of hatred and rage. A lord that got too handsy one night, a lady who drank a bit too much, a maid whose eyes lingered too long. They are all <em>mistakes</em>, settling on Sylvain like a second skin and building what would be what people see.</p><p>This is a mistake as well. This situation, this very meeting.</p><p>Castle Gautier is not made of great halls and high windows, not like Fraldarius or Fhirdiad or even Garreg Mach. Castle Gautier is compact stone and small rooms, labyrinthine hallways and hidden corridors; it is a dark and dreary place, silent like a graveyard and cold like winter. And its people, maybe in an attempt to keep warmth, are really… tactile.</p><p>Sylvain subtly moves his uncle’s hand away from his healthy leg, where it had been making its way up since the beginning of dessert. Tactile indeed. Maybe he thinks Sylvain would just let him, or that he is too drunk to care, but Sylvain rarely drinks enough to get drunk. Too many bad experiences and too little fun.</p><p>Their family might be small but they don't usually have meals together. They all have, or had their own places in the building: Mother at the training rooms, Father in his office, Miklan outside and Sylvain in the library. It is rare that they all gather together, and in this small and compact room that serves as their dining room, the absence of two people is more obvious than ever.</p><p>“Maybe it is time you two get married,” his uncle says, looking between Sylvain and little Yisu —not so little now, she is 18, soon to turn 19. Still not old enough for what her father is suggesting. She laughs, and when her father has turned away, looks at Sylvain with a grimace.</p><p>‘It is okay,’ he mouths. He will never go that far, and his family cannot force them. But what if they can? It has happened before, maybe they are just waiting for the moment when they can do it again.a ‘It is alright.’</p><p>He can say it all he wants, but in the end it might never be so.</p><p> </p><p>Gautier is the most remote of the lands of Fódlan, the frozen wasteland, the snow desert. Faerghus’ biggest territory, yet the least populated. The land of long nights and longer winters, of caves of ice and underground lakes, of neverending storms and cold winds and colder suns. That is what Gautier is known for.</p><p>It is also known for its people.</p><p>The people of Gautier are not social. They are not cheerful nor soft spoken, they have no smiles to share with others. Gautier is made of people as hard and cold as the lands they live in, rough and tough steel tempered by the region they inhabit. And that is even truer for its rulers.</p><p>The lands of Gautier are ruled by the family with the same name, as was custom in Faerghus. Said family is well spread around the land, in forts and keeps in strategic locations. Many have never met even one of these rulers, and yet many would have words about them. Fiery as the red of their hair, cold as the stone under their feet. Warriors in any way they could be.</p><p>Sylvain is no different than most, though he pretends to be the opposite. He speaks yet says nothing, smiles yet has no warmth. He walks with a heart frozen in unthawing ice, hollow and empty with a mask over his face. He moves around through tricks and lies, weaving a net of careful relations to support the land that saw his birth.</p><p>Or at least, it should have been so.</p><p>As many days before, Sylvain wakes up alone. His bed is empty and cold, while his skin still tingles from last night’s touches. No one who spends the night with him stays until morning: so it has been for years past now, and so it will be for many to come. He has come to be used to it, though he would love to have someone to call his own if only for longer than a week.</p><p>Yet, as many days before, his door opens not long after his own eyes do. In comes soft steps of bare feet on his rug, and the familiar sound of spells to revive the hearth that is his lifeline. Everyday he is too tired in the morning to get up and do it on his own, so someone else has to do it for him, and who else would it be but a servant of the castle?</p><p>His maid is not quite a servant of the castle, though, because the servants of Castle Gautier are as cold as everyone else in their land. She is a warm gift from the Goddess in the long nights of Gautier, her voice a choir of angels in the silence of the building. She has been with Sylvain for a decade by now, a merchant’s daughter with no dreams of fame and a love for art she shares with her master.</p><p>Most importantly, she has never drugged his meals or tried to get in his bed, and she never will. For that, Sylvain is thankful.</p><p>“Monthly delivery,” Sara says, dropping a basket of dried iceberries on his desk. She twirls around humming as she opens the curtains, complains at the lack of mess for her to clean, and serves two cups of tea for them to share at the breakfast -lunch really- table. She laughs when Sylvain struggles to dress himself before she helps, calloused hands never wandering elsewhere as so many hands have done before.</p><p>“How much was it?” He motions to the iceberries, another of his lifelines. That, and the medicine he purchases from the wandering riders, that helps lift his mood and get up in the mornings. It seems all he spends his money on is medicine, these days.</p><p>“Same as usual. Though I <em>might </em>have kept some for myself this time, if that’s alright?”</p><p>“No problem with me.”</p><p>They share a small meal before they each go back to their duties: Sylvain to the library, Sara next to Sylvain to answer to his very need. So it has been, for many years now, and so it will continue to be hopefully for many years more.</p><p> </p><p>Months pass and his leg is better, yet he is not allowed to leave.</p><p>“You will not leave here until you prove you can care for yourself,” Father says after he has beaten Sylvain to the ground. The Lance of Ruin pulses in his hand, some vague feeling of amusement coming from it, and Sylvain glares. That <em>traitor.</em> “If you cannot defend against such a weak blow, how can I trust you will not be captured again?”</p><p>So be it, Sylvain stays.</p><p>Their guests today are some messengers from Fraldarius, bringing news of the war effort. As always, nothing happens: Fhirdiad remains under Imperial rule as is Western Faerghus, Galatea and Charon have been struggling with the borders, the Alliance is fractured, same as always. No news of Felix or Ingrid or any of his old classmates, though that is to be expected.</p><p>No letters this time either. Maybe he should write again, but then they will call him needy. Clingy. Seeking attention. How dare he write such frivolous letters in the middle of war? How dare he complain he is home, warm and safe, when they are out there serving their country and defending their lands?</p><p>He feels like invisible hands are wrapped around his throat, keeping him silent.</p><p>One of the messengers brushes his hand in passing, and offers him a wink. Sylvain gives her a smile, as gallant as he often is. He does not talk to her or make a sound, and yet she still grasps his arm and drags him away.</p><p>He is tired.</p><p> </p><p>The calendar says it is five months, one week, three days until the Millenium Festival. They are supposed to meet then, the Blue Lions: Ingrid and Felix, Ashe and Annette, Mercedes. No Dimitri. No Dedue. No Professor.</p><p>No Sylvain.</p><p>He does not really know if he will be allowed to leave. Father often speaks words that are mere lies, says what he really does not mean. He said that Sylvain could go back to the frontlines once his leg healed, but his leg is already healed, and he still has not gotten the keys to his rooms back.</p><p>He tests the door one night. Locked, as every other night. How funny that home feels more like a prison than his weeks of captivity under the Empire.</p><p>People say that home is where you feel safe, but Sylvain has never felt safe anywhere. Not his parents’ house. Not the Academy. Not Fhirdiad.</p><p>For years, his family’s house has been plagued by the shade of jealousy and hatred, by the anxiety of a never ending war, by the howls of exile and a long lost land. For years, the place he considered the closest to <em>home</em> had been a tiny cabin in the border pass, loud soldiers who sing and laugh, and mourning every time they came back; even as a child, he would rather stay there than inside the cold dreary of Castle Gautier, because Castle Gautier never was, and never will be, <em>home</em>.</p><p>He knows that now. He has known that for quite a while now, since the very first time Miklan had tried to break Sylvain into tiny pieces and put him back together, since the very first time Father had told him to <em>get friendly</em> with a woman older than him, since the first time Mother had looked away from what happened before her very eyes and behind closed doors. He knows, and it hurt so much it does not hurt anymore, just a dull hollow in his chest like someone took his heart and threw it away.</p><p>(Fraldarius had been home once, Felix and Glenn and even the Duke, but-)</p><p>Sylvain does not have many allies in Gautier. It is a fact of life. Father cares for his health so long as he obeys, and Mother cares only for the battlefield past the border and nothing else. Miklan had been his one ally in the oddest of ways, bringing him food when he forgot to eat and healing him if his <em>training</em> left him too hurt and showing him secret passageways even if only so he could do what he wanted without anyone being aware.</p><p>Maybe Miklan had the right idea all along. His brother had been a bitter and angry man, with far too many self expectations to fulfill and even a harder time accomplishing them, yet he was free to do as he wanted most of the time so long as he came back in due time. Miklan traveled through Sreng and Faerghus, met people who listened to his words; he made himself a place in a land where he felt he had nothing, and yet he still wanted more.</p><p>Sylvain was never allowed out. Not out of Gautier, at the very least, not unless Father had a tight hold on his leash. He often said Miklan had it easier, because at times negligence is better than attention.</p><p>No one ever heard Sylvain’s cries.</p><p>For many years, Father had made the brothers fight each other, at first for the right to be the heir, later just for the amusement of it. Sylvain never won, not until the very last day.</p><p>“Gautier only show feelings in the battlefield,” Father had said one day, when Miklan was already gone and Sylvain struggled to stand up. “You know your brother through his blade, what is he telling you?”</p><p><em>Hate</em>. That was all Miklan was made of. Hate, and freedom, and desire. A shadow over Sylvain’s own fate, beastly claws wrapped around his heart. What he could become if he let go.</p><p>Sylvain looks at the mirror one evening, and sees Miklan.</p><p>He asks Sara to cut his hair once she is done bandaging his hand and throwing out the remains of glass. She protests but does so anyways, and prepares his tea with an extra drop of saxifrage. They don’t mention it.</p><p>Regardless of the endless sleep in his tea, Sylvain cannot fall asleep that night.</p><p> </p><p>His hawk circles overhead, just a small blurry dot in the sky. Sylvain wonders what she is looking for, if she needs something he cannot provide. He wonders if he can join her up there, if he can ever feel the breeze under wings bringing him far away. He wonders how it would feel to fly.</p><p>He looks. It is a long way down, but he doesn’t think he can grow wings in the few seconds before he hits the ground. Maybe if he was braver he would. Maybe if he felt life was worth it, his body would change to keep him safe at the last minute. Maybe, maybe.</p><p>He won’t do it. The Millennium Festival is soon, he has to meet his classmates. Friends. Companions. Do they miss him? Do they know about his situation? He doesn’t get letters nowadays, after all; for all they know, he has been lazing in his family’s house since he went missing. Or, maybe he does get letters, but why would anyone hand them to him? If they do exist, they are probably ash and dust in Father’s office, or worms’ food in the greenhouse. Not that it matters either way, since he would not reply —would not be able to reply at all.</p><p>His chest hurts.</p><p>He feels lonely. And tired. It is as if the Castle drained him of all energy to do anything, putting him in an endless state of lethargy and pain. He barely has enough strength of mind to get off bed in the morning, and many times he has woken to Sara shaking his shoulder with a mug of something warm in her hands. He has made his home by his window, looking out to the snowy forests and the stormwall in the distance, and the long way down to freedom.</p><p>He doesn’t get to see many people either, at least not people who don’t want to sleep with him. The side of the Castle that belongs to him isn’t comfortable enough for meetings or guests unless they have an objective in mind, and the staff that lives under his rooms’ has strict schedules that do not involve him. Father and Mother never visit, and he only sees them in the rare family dinners when they have time.</p><p>There is Sara, yes, but she is mostly in his shadow, trailing after him as when they were younger now that he doesn’t need constant aid. She is still a maid, even if they are friends: one foot out of line in front of the wrong people and she <em>will</em> be fired, or worse.</p><p>Apart from her, there aren’t many people who frequent his life. Once again, Miklan had been an unexpected ray of sunshine, deadly bright and blinding hot, burning his skin off his bones whenever he was around back when he was alive, yet still company that did not want him for his <em>worthless</em> body and name.</p><p>Is it bad that he misses his brother? His one equal company for so long, now gone just as many more. At least he understood what their life was like.</p><p>It sure is boring, up here in Gautier. There is nothing to do, and no energy to do it either. They took his coffee, tobacco, and alcohol as well, so he can’t pass time with those either. Sure, he has his books, but he has read them enough times already and he is not allowed anymore for now, because he keeps falling asleep with them on the bed and ruining them somehow.</p><p>He is not allowed many things, lately. He can’t even go to the battlefield, as Father says it is too dangerous. He doesn’t even like fighting, not like the trio of idiots —<em>his </em>trio of idiots—, but he really misses the battlefield. Misses fighting for his life instead of his dignity, because at least if he loses his life he will be <em>free</em>.</p><p>He can go to the training grounds, and the library, but only within certain hours before he is locked back in his rooms. He can try and flee, he can cry and scream, yet matter how much he fights and struggles, he will always end up back in his rooms.</p><p>Lightning magic is terrifying.</p><p>Sylvain never realized, when he was younger, how odd it was to live in private quarters that were always locked. When he was a child, Father managed the keys, and his schedule, and it wasn’t <em>weird</em> to be locked into his room until breakfast time the next morning. Most of the time it didn’t happen, but it was a common enough occurrence that he considered it routine, and never questioned it.</p><p>He is an adult now. An adult that is constantly monitored and kept in a gilded cage, with fake smiles and empty words and a mask of traps and lies. He exists for a single reason, kept alive like a prized stallion, from now and until his death.</p><p>(The women don’t have faces anymore. No faces, or names, or anything to make them different from each other. They just <em>are</em>, they exist, come and go, future Lady Gautier or future mother of the future Margrave or whatever. Fake, fake, <em>fake</em>.</p><p>The men are even worse.)</p><p>He really hates how <em>still</em> everything is, outside and inside both. The fire crackles merrily in the hearth, he can hear people moving downstairs and can see more people down in the training grounds, yet everything happens as if past a veil or underwater.</p><p>As if he was in the well once again. So quiet and silent, like the daze of a dream.</p><p>Maybe he is dreaming. Maybe this is all just a nightmare.</p><p>It is a long way down.</p><p> </p><p>Sylvain doesn’t grow wings. He doesn’t wake up either.</p><p>All he does is fall and fall and <em>fall—</em></p><p>He wakes up days later to the stinging pain of lightning and strips of leather holding him in place.</p><p> </p><p>Time passes.</p><p>Once he is finally released from confinement, it is two months until the Millennium Festival. No matter how hard he looks, he cannot find a way out: his body feels heavy, his mind foggy at all days, and if he <em>could</em> make his way downstairs, he would be caught within minutes</p><p>His true company in these dark days are his horse and his hawk.</p><p>They are not the best company. His horse is Gautier and Sreng trained, and out of reach as of now, running near the border or even past it. He had once thought of bringing her to Garreg Mach, but she is a warhorse before she is his companion, and she will not ride far from the castle unless it is with others of her own kind and heavy armor weighing more than a whole man. There was another, a scout horse he had trained since he was a child to move fast and silent, but he fell when Sylvain had been captured by the Empire.</p><p>His hawk…</p><p>His hawk is currently on his dinner tray, burnt to a crisp, a single blackened letter tied to her- its leg. Its beady blank eyes look up at him in judging, tiny burnt lines in the shape of branches spreading from its beak. Besides its dead body, the small ribbon that marked the bird as <em>his</em> is tied in a nice bow around a knife and a fork.</p><p>Margrave Gautier is a lightning mage before anything else.</p><p>Sylvain covers the plate with shaky hands, shoves the tray back to the maid, and heads back into his bedroom. The <em>click</em> of the lock is different. That was not Sara either.</p><p>He holds back his cries and painful sobs as he throws the old perch —covered in claw marks from many years in use—, the fitted metal claws and the blinder to the back of his wardrobe. They hit the back and fall to the floor, where they will stay until he can get himself together.</p><p>The world looks as if made of shadows.</p><p>When he can finally move again, he drags himself to his wardrobe. In the back, hidden by old clothes he has not worn in ages, is his shrine to those lost. Miklan’s axe. His Aunt’s headdress. Two letters from, and one addressed to, Glenn. The bridle of his old horse. Now, his hawk’s tools, never to be touched again.</p><p>The next day, he will put his maid’s bow in its case, broken in half and tainted in blood. There is no string, but he can reclaim a single feather of Sara’s earring for his own. He hangs them both by his brother’s axe, and mourns.</p><p>He cannot attend the funeral, either.</p><p> </p><p>The promised day comes. The promised day passes. The sun sinks low, night takes over and snow falls for cycles without end.</p><p>He wonders if the others managed to meet up. Ingrid and Felix and Mercedes and everyone else, he wonders if they found something —<em>anything</em> in the abandoned ruins of Garreg Mach.</p><p>He is not allowed to leave.</p><p>The shackles he wears might be invisible, but they are still <em>shackles</em>.</p><p> </p><p>The soldiers that return from the frontlines against the Empire —different from those who return from the border at Sreng— bring rumors. They mention beasts in the battlefield, golden hair stained in blood and a golden sword that stretches like a whip. They don’t mention names, but everyone knows who they are.</p><p>The Hope of the Kingdom. Dimitri. Byleth. The Hope of Fódlan.</p><p>Sylvain asks if he can go join them. He asks while making plans to escape either way.</p><p>“You will leave here once you secure an heir,” Father says, not looking up from his papers, and his letters, and the file of ladies who have been taking turns in Sylvain’s rooms. “I cannot risk you endangering yourself.”</p><p>Sylvain tries to leave, once again. He is dragged back, kicking and screaming, bloodied and burnt and with a broken arm.</p><p>This time, the shackles are real. The shackles and the telling <em>click</em> of the lock to his room sliding in, everything is real.</p><p>
  <em>A nightmare.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He is tired.</p><p>His medicine is gone. The pain is sharper than usual, spreading through his whole body. The fog too, it is darker and carries voices with it. Voices, and touches, and tight grips on his limbs.</p><p>He is so tired.</p><p> </p><p>...</p><p> </p><p>Duke Fraldarius visits.</p><p>For a second, Sylvain thinks he is here for something else, even though nothing would come out of such a coupling. No one had ever cared anyways, not since he was a child, and especially not now. What does it matter if the body is pretty and unresisting?</p><p>Yet, as he attempts to stay aware for another hour before it is time for dinner, there is a knock on his door. He doesn’t answer —there is no point to it, after all, and even if there was he cannot open the door. It is locked, and it will remain locked until whenever Father decides it is time. But, as he pretends to go back to sleep, the door opens and in comes Duke Fraldarius.</p><p>Sir Rodrigue takes one look at him, and at the room, and ends up cursing in seven languages as he lockpicks the shackles off. Sylvain is surprised. This, he did not expect, not from the man whose skills are as knightly as they can be. That is, was Glenn’s skill. Glenn’s specialty. He wonders if Glenn learned it from the Duke, or if the Duke learned from Glenn.</p><p>Either way, a few minutes of confusing questions later, he ends up in the sitting room before his Father’s office. There is yet another faceless, nameless lady who attempts to get him to bring her upstairs, but he is busy trying to listen in to whatever conversation is going on in the office.</p><p>It isn’t a conversation, rather just yelling back and forth that is barely loud enough for Sylvain to understand every word. His eyes might be bad, but his ears have always been better than others. It is why he is the watchtower, the sentinel over his friends, the one who sounds the alarm. One needs good ears to live through the long, never ending nights of a Gautier winter, especially when one keeps getting <em>lost</em> in the middle of nowhere thanks to someone else.</p><p>At times he is grateful for that.</p><p>It must be a funny sight, inside the office. Margrave Gautier, short and angry and <em>terrible</em>, wrapped in layers of fur that make him look bigger than he is; Duke Fraldarius, towering over Taiva Gautier, a constant cloud of white magic swirling around him as if it would give him the edge he does not have. It <em>had</em> been a funny sight, back when Sylvain was younger and Father would walk the halls with the Duke and King Lambert, like a cabin between two towers.</p><p>He listens.</p><p>
  <em>‘He is already old enough-‘</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Old enough to make his own decisions! You can’t lock him up and-‘</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Gautier needs a future, Rodrigue-‘</em>
</p><p><em>‘You have been doing this since he was fourteen; </em>that <em>is no life, Taiva.’</em></p><p>
  <em>‘It is the fate of our blood-‘</em>
</p><p><em>‘Sevi </em>killed herself<em>, Taiva. You would drive your son to the same end?’</em></p><p>Sylvain has had enough. He brushes the nameless lady away and flees to the storage room.</p><p>Maybe he can find his medicine hiding there.</p><p> </p><p>There is no medicine. There are no more iceberries either, there haven’t been any in a while now. He hopes that a month is not enough for his fertility to come back at full.</p><p>In three more months he will find out that the Goddess is a cruel, cruel woman, and that he will be a father to a <em>lovely</em> pair of twins.</p><p>(He tries to hate the idea. He fails, badly.)</p><p> </p><p>The Duke brings him along when he leaves, says it is for his own good. Sylvain fears for a long while that his stay in Fraldarius will be the same gilded cage that Gautier has been all his life.</p><p>He wonders why he does not care for that idea.</p><p>It is a mistake, just like Sylvain, so better go along with it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>What happens afterward? Well, this was originally meant to be the fic to make people ship Rodrivain with me, so they are cute together. As it is right now, it is just suffering and no healing, which suits me just right. I guess I could be convinced.</p><p>You can come greet me over @ ReunLuet on twitter! Also, we are building a bullying Sylvain server, so if you want to join you can ask for an invite (so long as you are 18+).</p><p> </p><p>  <b>Some notes on worldbuilding</b></p><p> </p><p><i>Gautier family</i>: Margrave <i>Taiva Maria Gautier</i>, a terrible man; Sylvain's father. He is short, because I said so, also a mage; he doesn't like people from outside Gautier. Isn't Maria a feminine name though? I do what I want.<i>Irene/Erdene Noel Gautier</i>, a battle crazed woman; Sylvain's mother. She is the swordsman to Taiva's mage; they are distant cousins, and she is from Sreng. <i>Sevi</i> and <i>Yisu</i>, because I wanted good female role models around Sylvain. Ehri Severina (call her Sevi) is Sylvain's aunt and Taiva's elder sister, she is dead in all my fics and Sylvain's horse is named after her. Yisu is a baby cousin who is just really cute.</p><p><i>Sara</i>: Attendants who are really caring for their bosses are what I live for.</p><p><i>Iceberries</i>: Delivered from Sreng, they are a natural contraceptive. They also have some antibiotic properties. Sylvain uses them a lot.</p><p><i>Icedrop</i>: Another Sreng import. On high doses, they are really strong hallucinogens and are known to cause schizophrenia and DID. In low doses, they do help with depression and anxiety but have to be really careful.</p><p><i>Glacier saxifrage</i>: Some poisonous flower that, in a high enough dose, puts the victim in a coma. It is used as sleep medicine. This one is found all over Faerghus in the winter, but mostly in Gautier.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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